Food nourishes us. Cooking connects us. Every day for the past six years, Namiko Chen, who goes by just "Nami" online, has been sending recipes from her cookbook of Japanese dishes out into the world from her home in San Francisco via her website and through a mix of social media channels. And every week she receives an array of messages from friends and strangers around the world.
Many are messages of thanks. Sometimes the messages arrive with photos of her completed recipes on serving dishes, some are queries about specific ingredients such as yuzu citrus fruit or udon wheat noodles, for example. Chen, a mother of two, says that it takes time to respond to them all, but she tries to reply to all correspondence. It's important, she says, because it motivates her to be a better cook and decoder of Japanese food.
Recently she received an email from an elderly man in the United States: His Japanese wife had become incapacitated and could no longer cook, so he had taken up cooking. He stumbled across Chen's website, JustOneCookbook, and started following the step-by-step instructions. Making Japanese food was a way of comforting and supporting his wife. He contacted Chen to share his story and say thanks.